Colors in the Sky
by kaorismash
Summary: KakaSasu. He sees a lot of things, but for all his genius, Sasuke is blind. Post-timeskip AU.


**Title:** Colors in the Sky  
**Summary:** He sees a lot of things, but for all his genius, Sasuke is blind.**  
Note:** Post-timeskip AU. Spoilery in the vaguest sense, though probably unnoticeable.

* * *

Konoha's thriving with more life than he remembers. Shinobi and civilians alike mingle along the market streets as they run through the motions of their daily routine. He doesn't feel as if he's part of this world anymore. He's the unseen spectator, a ghost; not interfering, just watching, observing, haunting.

Usually, he stands hidden away from the public eye, straight-backed with his hands hanging limply at his sides.

Usually, he watches.

He watches mainly because he doesn't know what else to do. The fire that had blazed so brightly has diminished to a mere ember barely flickering in the void inside his chest. There is no burning urge to fight, to kill, to be an avenger.

He wonders if there's anything at all, as he drifts through the village, watching the interaction between men and women and children. Perhaps he's lonely. He doesn't know for sure because he can't remember how it's supposed to feel. He remembers how much he hates it, after all those long tiring days of training at the academy that leads him back through the gates of a compound full of ghosts.

Sasuke focuses his attention on something in the street. There's a child skipping alongside a woman. The teeth of her geta catches onto a stray pebble and the girl stumbles, trips, falls, cries. The girl's mother kneels down beside her, lips thinning together and forehead creasing into multiple lines. It's a rather reddened sight, hazed by motion and erased by long, sweeping hair.

He's watching through the bloodied gaze of the Sharingan. It's easier this way. No one can reach him when he's immersed within the world painted with reds and blacks and inverted shades. It keeps him safe, keeps others safe. He doesn't have to talk to anyone and no one has to try to talk to him because no one can see or sense or feel him. There are no expectations and no one demands explanations and it's just him, on his own, living day by day with the after—future—images of the people around him who move in slow lightning blurs, whose voices lag and whistle by his ear at inaudible frequencies, whose faces he'll never catch simply because he doesn't want to.

He feels left behind and far too ahead of the game, as if time has ceased to flow as it speeds by all at once.

It's not necessarily a bad thing, he decides, and realizes that it's less about observing than it is pretending; pretending he has something to do, something to find, something to discover—pretending that this is what he wants.

He doesn't want it to be nothing, but it's the only thing he has left.

He closes his eyes and tilts his head back. When he opens them again it's to a sky that's a sickening shade of red. It's been so long since he's seen the world in bright, multicolored tones, he thinks briefly.

Time isn't something one keeps track of when in a world that's too slow and too fast, but Sasuke finds comfort in the routine of watching, observing, pretending. Habits aren't good things for a ninja to have, but he's no longer an avenger, and if he isn't an avenger, then he's probably not a ninja either, or anything else—not Uchiha, just Sasuke.

That ember in his chest flares when Sasuke sees one man unmoving amongst the haphazard motions of the villagers. Perhaps it's a feeling of shock, perhaps its anxiety. He closes his eyes to try and remember the way it affects his body—heart rate jumping for just a fraction of a second, lungs inhaling more oxygen than necessary, muscles freezing and tightening with ingrained instincts.

When he opens his eyes again the man is still there, watching him through a crimson, heavy-lidded eye uncovered by the hitai-ate that now hides the dark, unscarred one.

Kakashi's blinking slowly in that characteristically lazy way of his, unaffected by the distorted time that blurs the life around Sasuke.

The wheels rotate wildly around his iris, allowing Sasuke to see in painfully clear detail the shadows of parting lips from beneath the navy facemask. He's about to speak, but Sasuke can't predict what the man will say because the only thing he remembers of this man is a cheerfully smiling eye with a face covered three-quarters with cloth as hands—slender, callous, large—spark with dangerous, electric power.

Kakashi pauses, and then his lips come together to form a strange, mild sort of smile that makes Sasuke's pulse accelerate.

For what feels like a very long time, they stand there in silence. Sasuke with his back ramrod straight and arms deceptively slack by his side, Kakashi with his shoulders set in an indolent slouch and hands buried deep in his pockets.

When Sasuke opens his mouth, Kakashi says, "Hide and seek?" with a knowing slant of his brow.

For a moment Sasuke sees long black hair and kind black eyes. He wills the image away, and makes a soft sound that's not quite in agreement.

Kakashi closes his eyes briefly and a jolt runs through Sasuke—annoyance, interest, curiosity. Sasuke wonders what the man sees with his blood-stained gaze.

"You should stop playing," Kakashi says. "Or else everyone will forget." Because they've all grown up, are the unsaid words Sasuke hears all too clearly.

Sasuke narrows his eyes ever so slightly. He remembers that Kakashi's never been direct.

"You haven't," Sasuke murmurs, watching the man's expression carefully.

Kakashi doesn't even blink. "Not yet." Then his eye closes in a mocking smile and the inversion wavers.

"Hmm?" The red eye is open again in feigned surprise. "How strange." The man looks thoughtful.

Sasuke frowns. His control is slipping, something that's never happened before.

"I wonder…" Kakashi's voice is deep and low and ohso_close_. Sasuke tenses when a hand brushes his hair away from his eyes, ever so gently. Kakashi's mask blocks the flow of his breath, but not his warmth. It's the first brush of genuine warmth ever since his life had become a wash of blood. It seeps into his skin and spreads like poison through his veins.

Sasuke closes his eyes as the fingers linger on his cheeks, hoping to feel more of that warm touch, the heat emanating from the fingers now whispering down his jaw.

Kakasih leans down ever so slightly and brings their lips to near-brushing proximity. Sasuke holds his breath, cautious and wary and a tiny bit expectant.

He doesn't have to wait for long before the man presses their lips together in what would've been a chaste kiss had the mask not been in the way.

Kakashi's eye is still open, watching him openly unlike the way Sasuke watches the people. The revolving wheels seem to be searching for something.

Sasuke's lips curl up in a faint ghost of a smile, and he wonders if there's anything left to find. It feels as if he's been searching for so long already and there's _still_ nothing.

Except this time there's something—small, different—in the way his breath speeds a little faster, his heart pumps a little harder, his eyes shine a little brighter.

Kakashi makes a sound, a low, soft hum that's amused and commanding all at once that Sasuke's eyes slide shut and all he sees are the burning inversions of the cursed eye—spinning, whirling, consuming.

Sasuke pulls the mask down from the sculptured face and almost forgets to breathe when a hot tongue skims over his lips. He parts his lips for more air when a mouth encloses over his lower lip; biting, nipping, licking.

It's too close—not close enough.

With a growl, he presses himself against the hard, toned body, hands no longer passive by his side but digging hard into the strong, broad shoulders.

Kakashi chuckles against his lips and indulges him with a deep, smoldering kiss that robs him of whatever air he's managed to recover. Sasuke chokes on a moan and his fingers slacken marginally from their vice-like grip.

This is what he wants.

Sasuke makes a sound of protest when Kakashi pulls away, eyes soft and lips moist. Sasuke drinks in the sight of him, the pupils of his eyes dilating to memorize as much as he can all at once in case he never gets the same chance again.

"Sasuke-kun," Kakashi breathes in that deep husk that makes the flame in his chest flare, just that little bit more. He's not smiling, but his tone is genuinely tender in that gruff, smooth way that's strangely Kakashi. Sasuke closes his eyes and wills for the sound of his name on the man's tongue to linger. Kakashi makes a soft—amused and infuriatingly all-knowing—sound that used to always drive him crazy—because he _remembers_ now, and he can see, and there's _something_ in that void in his chest and—

Fingertips flutter over the lid of his left eye like the brush of a butterfly's wings.

Sasuke tilts his head back when Kakashi pulls him into the circle of his arms and brings his lips to the shell of his ear. Kakashi breathes out in an entirely distracting way, and says, "It's time you opened your eyes."

He does.

And he sees the pure silver of Kakashi's hair glistening with the rays of sunshine, eclipsed by the wide expanse of a clear sky that's so deep and free and an unbelievable shade of _blue_.

He watches, and breathes, and thinks that he's finally—

Kakashi's chest rumbles with the beginnings of a chuckle as he presses a smile into Sasuke's neck.

"Welcome home."


End file.
